


While My Guitar Gently Weeps

by kikibug13



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:51:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/pseuds/kikibug13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A way for a father to be close to his daughter, even when she doesn't know him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While My Guitar Gently Weeps

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Once Upon a Time ep. 1x17: Hat Trick

The first time had been the worst. The very worst. Grace hadn't recognized him and had been terrified - and the rest didn't matter. Not being booked as a child molester, not being roughly handled - hah. The Sheriff? The hunter? He had nothing on having had his head off. 

Nor on watching his daughter's face horrified and repelled by him. _My name is Paige. I don't know who Grace is. I don't think I can help you,_ please _go away!_

The almost good part of it was that they forgot. _She_ forgot, so after a little while, she didn't flinch when she caught sight of him anymore. It was the most he could hope for, for a long while. But he didn't give up. Making a hat that worked would fix this. Get them back to their own real world where they could be a family again. In their own little home, poverty and all. No Regina to make it sour again, Regina was too busy playing in _this_ world with her little ignorant puppets who put their faith in their elected mayor and nobody recalled when the last elections were, but it wasn't time for new elections yet, was it? Not really. 

It was like looking at things from a whole different point of view, even for somebody as him who had traveled by the ways of _the_ hat and seen worlds that were not quite right. Different lands, touching each other, each as real as the last one... 

But the people here were the people from _his home_ , only stuck into a different place, different time, different conditions, different terms of existence. 

Different families. Husbands separated from wives (as though that was new him), children from their parents... 

Jefferson's fist smashed into the window of his (all his, all rich and beautiful and his... alone) house, the sharp glass cutting into his skin and tempting him for a second before he pulled his arm away, red and slick and barely registering as pain, not compared to everything else. But if he gave in to that, he would really be deserting his family for good. His family, his Grace, who didn't even know his face except maybe as a distant nightmare of somebody who frightened her. 

Off with his head. 

He was alive. While there was life, there was hope, even as the very same hope was shredding him up inside. 

Few things ever soothed him, because everything he touched, everything he had, and everything he found, he wanted to give to her, to share with her. But he couldn't, because he was a stranger whom his parents didn't even know. A face she sometimes caught when she looked up from her ice-cream at Granny's, or leaned her head against he window of the school bus. 

But eventually, he found things that helped. Some songs which the unreliable radios caught, music. Well, he had wealth, he could have music, couldn't he? 

And, most importantly, when he found their way back home, he could give her all the music he learned, and she would smile and tilt her head to one side and tell him which of the songs she enjoyed and which weren't interesting. He could sit on a tree stump in the forest and she could sit at his feet, and he'd strum the strings... well, of whatever instrument he found. The ones he had seen and heard back home didn't quite show up around Storybrooke, but a string instrument was a string instrument, right? He could learn on a guitar and then figure it out on whatever else he put together back home. He was good at putting together things or patching them together... 

He was fingering one of the newer songs he had caught, trying to get the chords right, when she ran past him, chasing a schoolmate and laughing in the warm autumn afternoon. The two of them zipped back and forth a few more times, and then with a squeal of delight discovered a leaf pile and then there was probably not a tank that could pry them away for a good hour. 

And he could just sit there and watch and listen... 

Well, not quite. When he stopped playing and started paying attention to his girl, people started giving him that look or even outright glaring at him... so he resumed his playing. Only watching her from the corner of his eye. Only hearing her laughter and not quite all the words that she laughed with. 

He cheeks were all wet and night had fallen by the time unfolded from the now-chilly bench to start the long, lonely walk home. 

But his heart was that little bit lighter, because he had been a part of her joy again. It had been way, way too long.


End file.
